Toronto Is Converting an Airport Into a Futuristic City Within a City

Developers in Toronto have their sights set on converting an old, defunct airport into a thriving urban center. What was once the Downsview Airport, a storied aviation base, will now become a $22 billion project to provide new businesses, public parks, and residential housing for as many as 55,000 people. A developer behind the project has called it “the largest of its kind in North America.”

Downsview Airport, which encompasses some 370 acres, was originally opened in 1929 and served as a Canadian air base during WWII. In more recent years, it has served as the base of operations for Bombardier, one of the largest aviation companies in the world. The site was sold in 2018 for $635 million and is now in the process of being reinvented.

Northcrest Developers, the company behind the project, envisions a thriving urban hub that will maintain many of the architectural fixtures of the original airport, including its runway and 11 airplane hangars. “Over the coming decades, we will transform these largely undeveloped lands into a series of vibrant neighbourhoods. Connected to each other, with a mix of housing options, new jobs in growing industries, opportunities for new business, access to parks, community facilities and services, we will create an exciting new destination in Toronto,” the company’s website states.

As an example of how the original airport infrastructure will be written into the DNA of the new project, developers want to transform the structure’s runway into a walkable promenade that can connect people to the seven different neighborhoods that have been planned for the project. At the same time, the original plane hangars could become spaces where companies could operate, one Northcrest executive told Business Insider. Developers also claim that the project will create as many as 40,000 new jobs.

A lot of people have been trying to build new cities lately. In particular, celebrities (like Kanye West and Akon) and wealthy Bay Area tech executives (California Forever) have attempted to pour money into new urban projects. Often, these projects flounder. The gulf between developers’ ambitions and executable reality is often too large to bridge.

Unlike many of these other projects, however, the Downsview project is building off of an already existing infrastructure, the likes of which would’ve otherwise been bulldozed. It also has a more realistic timeline than some of the more quixotic projects announced in recent years. The first “phase” of the Downsview project is expected to be completed by 2026, though developers do not expect the urban space to be fully completed for 30 years.